


Spartacus

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz & Simmons are worried about Daisy and come up with a plan to help her.<br/>-<br/>Part of, possibly soon home to the collection of, fics in which the Shield team goes underground saboteur/vigilante style, based on some ideas (not necessarily compatible with each other) I have for S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spartacus

Other fics in this concept/verse (ish thing, bc they're not necessarily compatible with each other) are: [FS x](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5863714/chapters/17460523), [Bus Kids/Team x](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7295626/chapters/17495995)

-

“Fitz?”

Her voice was soft. Hestitant. It had been such a long time since they’d been close enough to speak at night, and she was not used to having someone to whom she was prepared to confess her fears. 

“Mm?” His finger brushed the side of her arm reassuringly. 

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah. Can’t sleep. You?” 

“I can’t sleep either.” 

“Worried about Daisy?” 

As if he could see her nodding in the dark, Fitz invited her to move closer to him. Simmons shuffled until they were facing each other, and they could see the shine of each other’s eyes.

“Me too,” Fitz confessed. “You don’t think she’ll, y’know, _do_ anything, do you?” 

“No.” Simmons screwed up her nose, casting away the thought before it could sink its roots too deep in her fears. “No, she wouldn’t. She has family, she has purpose now, she knows she can’t afford to be reckless with her life. Otherwise she’d have insisted on staying.” 

Fitz made a noncommittal sound, unconvinced. Simmons frowned and found his hands, and cupped them gently.

“Still bloody freezing,” Fitz hissed, though he was grateful for their steadying influence. As he had in Bucharest, Simmons kissed his hands, but it was a different kind of love and curiosity – one burdened by concern – that was in her eyes when she met his again. 

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, as gently as she could. 

Fitz shrugged like he was trying to hide from it, but her soft, persistent contact called it out of him. 

“It’s nothing, I just can’t shake…You know, when I thought…when I thought you were… _”_ he finally croaks it, “- _dead_ \- I think I lost my mind. It’s like there was nothing else in the world except that I had to get to you, and there was no other way except the rock. I marched straight in there, yelling and screaming, and I didn’t think – I didn’t care – that if it had taken me, maybe neither of us would have got back. I was just lucky. I was so reckless, and so lucky, and I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I think Daisy’s a bit too much like me, you know, a bit too much of a bleeding heart and it scares me that she might do…what I would do.” 

 _“Fitz.”_ Simmons whispered his name like she was trying to make him promise. “That’s terrifying. Please don’t do that, I can’t bear to think you’d hurt yourself over me.”

She kissed his hands again, and squeezed them tightly, pressing the promise into his skin.

“As for Daisy,” she continued, “she’s dealt with so much loss before. She always gets up, she always comes through. She’ll be okay. That’s just what she does. Even if she has to put herself entirely back together from scratch, she’ll be okay. Besides, there’s no direction for her. You had some kind of goal, you weren’t being completely irrational; there was something within your reach you were trying to use, albeit a dangerous something. There’s no way Daisy could reach Lincoln, even if she wanted to.”

“She couldn’t fly, before,” Fitz returned, with a weariness and simplicity that signalled it was hardly detailed, incontrovertible proof, but it was something, that formed a string of thought, that had been plaguing him. Possibly since he’d seen the picture in the paper this morning, of Daisy caught in a mid-air leap at least six storeys high…but possibly since the moment he’d watched her crumble in tears on the Zephyr floor. 

Simmons took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the thoughts that had been circling around Fitz’ mind for so long, finally released. She let go the breath, and insisted: 

“She can’t _fly._ She’s just manipulating air currents and force to accentuate her own abilities. She probably wouldn’t be able to stay in the air for more than a few seconds at a time, and she certainly wouldn’t have a hope of breaching the atmosphere. She has limits.”

“I know.” Fitz sighed. “I know. She’s probably fine. I just don’t like that she’s gone off on her own. She hates being alone, she’s terrified of it...I just want her to be safe. And home.”

“And wrapped in a blanket burrito having an Indiana Jones marathon?” 

“Exactly.” 

“Me too.” 

“I wish there was something we could do to _help_ her. Actually help her, not just ‘give her time’ and ‘be there for her’. I mean, something real. You know?” 

At this, Simmons bolted upright, wrenching her hands from his and sending a shot of cold air into the space under the blankets as she looked around and forced her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. 

“What if there was?” she challenged. 

Simmons climbed out of bed, and ran over to the walk-in robe. Fitz turned the lamp on and rubbed his eyes, and found Simmons rummaging furiously through a cardboard box she had dragged out from underneath their clothes.

“What are you talking about? What is that stuff?” He recognised some of it – some was even his – gadgets and prototypes and parts without a place scattered around Simmons, who was still digging frantically, until she pulled out what she was looking for. Fitz’ eyes widened. They were a prototype of Daisy’s gloves, one step before they’d become gauntlets proper. The shimmering cellular material of Simmons’ inhibitors shone in the dim light, between panels of protection and control mechanisms he’d added to translate and direct Daisy’s vibrations. 

“Those don’t work,” he started to explain. “There’s too much waste in the energy conversion to make them worthwhile. As weapons, anyway. They were mainly to stop her arms from breaking, which she seems to have control of by now. And…neither of us have earthquake powers.” 

“But what if we could?”

Simmons’ eyes were wide, hungry with the possibilities. She crawled toward him a few steps, before standing – as if all of a sudden remembering feet moved faster – and leaping onto the bed. 

“What if we could turn these into creators, not just translators, of her powers? We could create false quakes. False Quakes, even, we could pretend to be her: confuse the media; confuse everyone. Even Shield. We could hide Daisy by _duplicating_ her.” 

“Um.” Fitz paused. His instinct was to turn the idea down outright – it was dangerous, and probably extremely difficult - but the promise of protecting Daisy was too inviting. And difficulty, he liked to believe, was not something to be shied away from. 

“It’s possible,” he qualified, “but I don’t know if I’d be able to entirely stop the inward force. Daisy’s bones, her biology, is made to handle being shaken up. Ours isn’t. If I calibrate it wrong, they could break your arms.” 

“We’ll try them one arm at a time, then,” Simmons stated, unfazed.

Fitz let out a shaky breath, pale at the thought of hurting her, even by accident, even with her consent…but science was always risky, especially in the fields and at the levels they practiced, and they’d both been through worse before, for science, let alone for Shield. Let alone for Daisy. 

“Guess I’ll just have to calibrate them correctly,” Fitz resolved, and nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”


End file.
